Indoor vaccination rules proving more popular among Manitobans

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This article was published 31/10/2021 (1600 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Fresh polling data show Manitobans have grown comfortable with requiring vaccination for people gathering indoors.

This month, Probe Research surveyed Manitobans on a list of activities, asking whether they should be limited to vaccinated people, and compared the results with the same questions being asked three months prior.

The results show at least 11-point increases since July in Manitobans who feel proof of vaccination should be mandatory for teenagers to play sports (48 per cent this month), attend the workplace (55 per cent) and gather in an indoor public space (59 per cent).

“I think it’s just people getting more comfortable than anything,” said Probe principal Curtis Brown, whose firm shared the data with the Free Press.

Brown noted that people have gone to indoor sports games and other events limited to vaccinated poeple since July, when the firm last surveyed Manitobans about what many call vaccine passports.

“When we last asked people, it was just talked about; it was being debated but not implemented,” he said.

As with most of Probe survey, which occurred Oct. 19 to 26, Manitoba’s rural south was at odds with the rest of the province.

Only a third of respondents in that area say a proof of vaccination should be necessary to go to work or for teens to attend sports, and just 39 per cent support limiting indoor public places to those who have shots, compared with majority support in all other areas of the province.

Meanwhile, since July there has not been a substantive change in how Manitobans across the province feel about vaccination being mandatory for international travel (78 per cent in October), flying commercially (71 per cent) or driving to the U.S. (61 per cent).

Brandon University political scientist Kelly Saunders expected those numbers to be even higher, given how familiar Manitobans have become with producing proof of vaccination.

“It’s become normalized now that people pull out their (immunization) cards; we don’t even wait to be asked when we walk into a restaurant,” Saunders said.

Some of that is likely driven by people who feel safer entering spaces where everyone is vaccinated. But Saunders said many Manitobans overall are probably unenthusiastically abiding by masking, distancing and providing proof of vaccination because of the measures seeming success in helping the province avoid a severe fourth wave.

“It’s just that reluctant acceptance of the necessary measures we need to see the light at the end of the tunnel,” she said.

“The vast majority of us are recognizing that we’re very tired of living with these restrictions, but there’s no other way around this, other than just doing all these things in order to get our way out of it.”

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca